With the release of the original Godzilla movie GOJIRA I was
watching some of Toho's Kaiju films. ("Kaiju" is Japanese for
"giant monster." GOJIRA was Japan's first of many Kaiju films.)
It was, as always, a sobering experience. I watch monster films
every once in a while as a way of putting my own life into
perspective. I think we have to watch such films periodically to
remind ourselves how good life really is. We ought to remember
how lucky we are and how really thankful we must be that you and I
have been born into a species of megafauna. [-mrl]

I have always liked one line in the original Godzilla film GOJIRA
(here called GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS). One scientist has a
weapon that might kill the monster, but is hesitant to release
this new weapon on the world. A military man tells him, "Then you
have your fears, which may become reality, and you have Godzilla,
which is reality." I always wanted to make up a button that said,
"Godzilla is reality." Of course it would be facetious. The
simple fact is that giant monsters rarely show up in serious news.
They seem to have little to do with reality. Except for
Pulgasari. This beast is a North Korean giant monster who eats
iron and grows to hundreds of feet high. Pulgasari actually is
important in international news. And I am not talking about
entertainment news. The whole Pulgasari incident shows just how
weird politics in Korea really is. The details of the story,
mostly rumor until now, were just released early in April. Kim
Jong-il, dictator of North Korea, produced the film. It was
directed by Shin Sang-ok, formerly South Korea's premiere
director. Shin was kidnapped from South Korea, taken to North
Korea, imprisoned for four years with no explanation, and then
forced to make a Marxist monster movie, with the aforementioned
Pulgasari. At this point you probably think I am kidding. No.
Really. Shin really was kidnapped so that he could be forced to
make a bad monster movie for Kim Jong-il. The story appeared in
the Manchester Guardian, taken from Shin's recently published
memoirs. (See the Guardian story at .)

Shin Sang-ok really was one of South Korea's great filmmakers.
His wife was Choi Eun-hee, a popular actress. In 1978 Shin Sang-
ok fell from grace with the South Korean government and was
forbidden to make any more movies. Meanwhile in North Korea
dictator-to-be Kim Jong-il, son of the then-dictator Kim Il-sung,
decided to try to show the world the power of North Korean cinema.
He had his own ideas how to make convincing propaganda films and
he wanted to build a film industry around Shin Sang-ok and Choi
Eun-hee.

Shin first noticed something was wrong on a trip to Hong Kong with
his wife when Choi went to a meeting to talk about an upcoming
film role and then never returned. Shortly after that when he was
going to dinner one night someone pulled a sack over his head.
There was something inside the sack that knocked him out when he
breathed it. When he woke up he had been smuggled over the border
into North Korea. Shin says in his memoir that he tried to escape
but was caught and thrown into a prison camp for four years.
While in the camp he as fed nothing but grass, rice, and salt.
Meanwhile he was forced to undergo Marxist brainwashing. During
this period he had no idea what all this was being done to him.
He assumed his wife was dead all this time.

In 1983, again with no apparent reason, the imprisonment was
ended. Shin was treated like a VIP and was taken to a reception
with Kim Jong-il and with his kidnapped wife. Shin expected an
explanation but instead heard Kim complain to him about how
disappointing and bad the filmmakers were in North Korea. Kim had
written his own book on cinema that helpfully explained how films
should be made. But North Korean filmmakers had not followed his
guidelines. Then Kim heard that the great filmmaker Shin was
forbidden to make films in his own country. Shin and North Korea
seemed like a perfect match to Kim and so he arranged that Shin
and his wife would be "brought" to North Korea, educated in
Marxism, and then would make films for the government. As for the
fact that they were not to be given a choice in the matter, well
nobody is given a choice in North Korea, why should the Shin and
his wife object that they were assigned to a task? Particularly
since Shin was to be given a salary of $3,000,000 a year and lived
in luxury.

Shin made several films in North Korea, but the best known is
PULGASARI. (The IMDB does not know where the film is available
and to be honest I don't remember where I got my copy. But I have
it on VHS from a company aptly called Rubbersuit Pictures.) When
I bought it I think I knew it had been directed under duress and
that was the main reason I was interested to see it.) The story
is set in the 1300s. About the only thing really remarkable about
the film is the use of multitudes of people from the North Korean
army. Shin was not given a lot of resources, but he was given the
army. The creature starts about two inches high and grows to
something like a hundred feet on a diet of pure iron. The article
says his design owes a lot to Godzilla, but he looks more like a
huge bipedal water buffalo with fierce fangs and spurs on his
shoulders. In the film, an artist who made Pulgasari about two
inches tall forms the creature from rice. But the little nipper
likes to chew on iron weapons and farm implements. On this diet
he grows really big and fights for the people against the evil
King.

Kim Jong-il even managed to get Toho people to help with his film.
Kenpachiro Satsuma who played the Smog monster in GODZILLA
VS. THE SMOG MONSTER and later played Godzilla in the Toho films
from 1984 to 1995 plays Pulgasari. Kim wanted to market his
Marxist monster movie to the world and even sell plastic toy
Pulgasaris much in the way that Godzilla toys are marketed.
Sadly, the film did not appeal to people like a Godzilla film
does. Kim will have to peddle his propaganda parable to his own
people. The film really has value only as a curiosity.

Kim Jong-il began to believe that Shin was actually loyal to North
Korea. He allowed Shin and his wife to go to business meetings in
Vienna--under heavy guard, of course. Shin was supposedly trying
to get a European release for his next film, but actually he
arranged that the release would be for him and his wife. After
help from a Japanese movie critic and a taxi chase, the Shin and
his wife escaped to an American embassy.

After ten years Kim Jong-il had PULGASARI released, but the film
has generated little interest beyond curiosity. However as a
curiosity, the story of its making is one of the strangest in
cinema history. [-mrl]

"Syringes also got into almost anyone's hands. My mother had a
pair of hypodermic syringes, sturdy glass things with those
needles the size of a garden hose. [I had one that I used to
refill my fountain pen cartridges. -mrl] For some reason there
was fear that druggies would buy needles and shoot up. Now
because of AIDS we have needle exchanges. People who get
syringes in them have shown a deplorable tendency to go sell the
things for more dope. [It must be nice to have a single goal in
life. :-) -mrl] Not to mention those who just know the Man is
monitoring the exchanges (and might not be so wrong at that). Why
not just make syringes available over the counter?"

Regarding Evelyn's comment that Isaac Asimov's THE RETURN OF THE
BLACK WIDOWERS ("I can remember liking this series years ago, but
it seems fairly simplistic now"), he says, "I think this may be
because the problem is almost always based on some interesting
piece of trivia that Asimov picked up over his research. Henry
might be challenged if he had been asked to find the Unabomber."

On Philip Carraher's ALIAS SIMON HAWKE: FURTHER ADVENTURES OF
SHERLOCK HOLMES IN NEW YORK, he asks, "I may look out for this but
hasn't Larry Millett pretty much got Holmes tied to the Upper
Midwest?" [Not in my opinion, though he's certainly trying. -ecl]

And regarding Dan Simmons's ILIUM, "Well I did finish it, but
because it was a Hugo nominee. If it hadn't been I would have
chucked it even earlier. The Ilium scenes remind me of those
Biblical novels from the fifties where the character list included
Absalom, Adonijah, Solomon, and Sally. On the other hand, Lisa
liked it." [-jtm]

CAPSULE: Great architect Louis Kahn's work and his personal life
intertwine as they are investigated by his illegitimate son
Nathaniel almost three decades after his father died. The film
would have been more powerful if it had conveyed a better
understanding of what made Kahn's buildings great. If a bit long,
the film is always intriguing. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10

Louis Isadore Kahn was considered one of the world's greatest
architects. Yet when he died in Pennsylvania Station of a heart
attack in 1974 he was financially strapped and it took three days
for authorities even to identify who this man was. And who was
he? He was the father of three different families with one wife
and two mistresses. Nathaniel Kahn, a child by one of the
mistresses, was only eleven years old when his father died. Last
year Nathaniel released this documentary about his search for the
truth about and the story of his father. In the course of the
narrative he visits many of his father's buildings. Nathaniel
visited and interviewed people who worked with his father, other
great architects, and members of the three families. We learn
much about Louis Kahn and hear many words of praise about Louis's
work. Unfortunately, Nathaniel needed to make more comprehensible
why what his father did was really great architecture. More often
he shows the viewer the building and quotes accolades that it
received. He has experts describe Kahn's buildings with terms
like "the spirituality of the space." The viewer not versed in
architecture can tell that the work is being praised, but
frequently will not understand where the genius lies. A Louis
Kahn building looks unusual and frequently has an alien feel.
Sometimes it may even strike the average viewer as actually being
a little ugly. And in the documentary Kahn himself comes off as
unusual and alien, and there are parts of his personality that
seem ugly.

Nathaniel's approach to documenting his father is almost a
scrapbook-like approach. Rather than talking about his art, then
his professional life, then his personal life, Nathaniel flits
from one to the other and back. It is not entirely clear from the
film that Nathaniel himself understands what makes Louis's work
great. He shows his father's buildings and repeats some
adjectives about the architecture, but it is not clear a non-
architect would understand the descriptions and I am not even sure
an architect would. There are two sorts of virtues of
architecture. There is functionality and there is something that
goes beyond that so the construction is a form of self-expression.
Some of Louis's buildings are not totally functional. In some
cases people who used the buildings did not find the buildings
either comfortable or practical. His early buildings seemed to
impress architects but not occupants. Still the buildings were
considered great as art. Louis seemed apply an arcane philosophy
to all his father did. He tells a class that an architect must
honor his materials. For example "brick likes an arch." One does
not use cement to top brick pillars but you create a curve. One
makes the arch from brick to pay tribute to the brick.

Professionally Louis comes off as visionary but out of touch with
reality. When consulted about the redesign of Philadelphia's
downtown his ideas seemed to include having people park outside
the city and walk into the city. How he planned to make this
system work with the distances involved is never made clear. I
suspect that the residents of Philadelphia are relieved that the
city ultimately was not built around Kahn's ideas.

Somehow this film is reminiscent of Woody Allen's SWEET AND LOW
DOWN. Both films are about people who are totally self-absorbed
but who are at the same time geniuses. Both men do much to ruin
the lives of those around them, using their genius as an excuse to
exploit others. The three families for whom he was the father
live in a state of jealousy for each other and family politics are
part of what MY ARCHITECT is about. Louis was more concerned
about keeping building materials from clashing than from keeping
his families from conflicting. But as one of the wives said, "We
all supported and forgave."

Louis did not leave many buildings, but as another architect says,
"Quality more important than quantity." Louis Kahn was honored by
his peers and some of his buildings, like the National Assembly
Building, Dhaka, Bangladesh, are greatly loved. The film his son
made, like his father's buildings, will be interesting, but will
not entirely function. Rate MY ARCHITECT the film his son made
about him a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10. [-mrl]

John Wyndham's THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS was a fair success at our
science fiction book discussion group. Coincidentally, the New
York Review of Science Fiction had just run two articles on John
Wyndham, including one which traced the roots of the triffids (as
it were) to such works as Edgar Wallace's "The Black Grippe",
Edmond Hamilton's "The Plant Revolt", and John Wyndham's "Puff-
Balls" (a.k.a. "Spheres of Hell", a.k.a. "The Puff-Ball Menace"--
it went under almost as many names as John Wyndham himself).

Michael J. Benton's WHEN LIFE NEARLY DIED is a rather dry
discussion of mass extinctions in general and the Permian
extinction in particular. I could never figure out how the
information was arranged. Just when I had decided he was tracing
the history of our understanding of extinctions chronologically,
there would be a digression that threw off the continuity.
Intriguing stuff, but hard to read. [***Spoiler Warning*** Benton
concludes that what caused the greatest mass extinction ever for
this planet was a huge volcanic eruption in eastern Siberia that
formed what is now called the Siberian Traps. This is an area of
volcanic rock the size of the current European Union. The
formation is the right age to be the cause, and the eruption must
have been a real showstopper. It would have killed a lot outright
and released carbon dioxide enough to greenhouse-warm the planet
60 degrees centigrade. This would in turn have melted the ice
caps and released pockets of poison gas frozen in the arctic. The
eruption, the climate heat, and the poison gas combined to kill an
estimated 90% of living animals. -mrl]

Patricia Highsmith's BLACK HOUSE is hard to read for a different
reason--it is too unsettling. Highsmith is best known as the
author of STRANGERS ON A TRAIN and the creator of Ripley (the
talented one, not the Alien-fighter), but her best work may be in
her short fiction, which I would describe as "tales of extreme un-
ease" in which perfectly normal people end up killing someone
without feeling any sense of guilt or remorse. I have to admit I
stopped after two stories because they were *so* effective that
they were making me feel very uneasy and uncomfortable.

Charles Stross's SINGULARITY SKY, on the other hand, was so hard
to read, or uninvolving, or something, that I gave up after fifty
pages of so. Somehow this year's Hugo nominees aren't doing it
for me.

And yet another example of synchronicity: One morning I read
Jeffrey Ford's Hugo-nominated "The Empire of Ice Cream", which is
about synesthesia. I then went home, opened Chris Rodrigues and
Chris Garratt's INTRODUCING MODERNISM (ISBN 1-84.46-229-9, Totem
Books) to where I had left off and two pages later in a section on
how the arts relate to each other read, "Charles Baudelaire (1821-
67), a proto-modernist poet, experimented with 'synaesthesia',
which means translating one sense perception into another."
Rodrigues also says that Baudelaire introduced the most important
urban figure of Modernism, the "flaneur" or stroller. I wonder if
this means that such radio shows as "The Whistler", "The Man in
Black" and "The Shadow" are Modernist. [-ecl]

Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Quote of the Week:
As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take
which course he will, he will be sure to repent.
-- Socrates